So apparently the Bush administration has figured out a new way of getting around those tricky executive agency reports and recommendations - they simply ignore them! On June 25, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration decided they didn’t need to read the EPA’s report on carbon emissions, so they simply ignored the email containing the document.

Written in response to the 2007 Supreme Court ruling re: Massachusetts Et Al. v. Environmental Protection Agency Et Al., the EPA report concluded that greenhouse gases produced are harmful pollutants, a danger to people and to the environment, and must be controlled. Before the court handed down its April 2007 decision on the matter, the EPA had refused to determine whether greenhouse gases were pollutants and subject to regulations laid out under the Clean Air Act. Because of this (in)decision, the EPA promulgated a lack of regulatory authority over matters pertaining to the environmental impact of greenhouse gases.

In an effort to force the federal agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants, Massachusetts Et Al. (consisting of 12 states, 3 cities, 13 organizations and America Samoa) sued the EPA, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, National Automobile Dealers Association, Engine Manufacturers Association, Truck Manufacturers Association, CO2 Litigation Group, Utility Air Regulatory Group, and 10 carbon emitting states in federal court. Arguing that greenhouse gases are pollutants and must be regulated, as mandated under the Clean Air Act, Massachusetts Et Al. brought suit in an effort to force the EPA to begin regulating the pollutants.

In the 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court determined that the EPA must in fact make a determination as to whether greenhouse gases pose a danger to people and the environment:

In short, EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change. Its action was therefore arbitrary, capricious, . . . or otherwise not in accordance with law. We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding, or whether policy concerns can inform EPA’s actions in the event that it makes such a finding. We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.

In response to the court’s findings, the EPA drafted a report which conclusively determined that greenhouse gases are pollutants according to the Clean Air Act, and must be regulated and controlled to avoid further harming people and environment. Once submitted to the White House for review however, the report ended up in a kind of email-purgatory, where it sat unread and lacking official status. I guess it would have been hard for the President to claim that Barney ate his email, so instead he just pretended that he never got the message.

So instead of being forced to read the report and accept the fact that it really is the EPA’s job to regulate carbon emissions, the administration, by stonewalling, prompted the EPA to go back and revise their original report. Since receiving the original report (but not reading it), the White House put pressure on the EPA to scale back their findings, and draft a new, less conclusive version. The new report reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant, but offers no recommendations and does not conclusively classify greenhouse gases as pollutants.

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Even though I have been recycling since I was a little girl, I am sometimes still amazed by the amount of time and energy that goes into processing my own household waste. When I was little, recycling was a family activity - we would sort glass and aluminum, crush cans and bundle newspapers on Saturday mornings, than load everything into our Datsun 510 and deliver it to the University of Maryland’s recycling center. Taking care of the recycling was just a part of life - something I didn’t think much about, but instead simply did.

Today, recycling seems much more complicated than back in the early 80’s. I live in a small apartment that has a living room/dining room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. There are trash recepticals in each room, and when I actually take the time to empty them and sort through my trash, I’m always shocked by how long it takes me to finish the task. Now, I will admit that I could process my waste more frequently, (thereby cutting down on the sheer volume of garbage I ever need to process at once), but that’s just not how I do things. Instead of taking out the trash once a week, I wait until the stack of paper behind my desk is overflowing, and the plastic bottles are overflowing their bins in my living room.

When I do finally process my trash, it takes time to sort through my desk garbage and separate the sensitive documents that need to be shred from the used envelopes, offers for gym memberships and well-read magazines. Once everything is sorted, I typically have a large paper shopping bag (today’s bag probably weighs 10 pounds) full of newspapers, magazines, advertisements and other recyclables. My shredder gets a small stack of sensitive documents, and there’s usually a plastic shopping bag worth of pure garbage left over.

Once that’s done, I pull out the paper recycling from the bathroom and bedroom trash containers, find any shampoo bottles that have made their way into the garbage can, and than set to work on sorting the other recyclables. My city recycles paper, cardboard, several types of plastic, glass and aluminum. I take this kind of recycling out every few weeks (as compared to the paper which I sort through every few months), and will normally dispose of 30-40 plastic bottles, 5 or 6 glass containers, and a milk crate full of cardboard.

The kitchen garbage tends to be straightforward, mostly because I don’t throw recyclables into that bin, and I don’t compost my food waste. I thought about composting, but I live in the city, have no yard, cook little, and don’t know what I would do with the waste in a full kitchen compost crock. The kitchen garbage goes out every two weeks or so, and is most difficult to deal with when I’ve cleaned out the fridge and had to toss out rotten food.

It would be easier to simply stick all of my solid waste into large black plastic bags and dump it in the garbage, but sorting through my garbage is helpful. By being forced to look through the remnants of my consumption, I am forced to acknowledge how much I use, and to think about the impact my purchases have on my community, my country and my planet. In her book, Garbage Land, Elizabeth Royte writes about sorting through her trash for a year, and recording all she threw away as part of an experiment she took on to track her consumption. While I don’t go nearly as far as Royte, I do try to look at what I throw away and ask myself if I could be doing a better job at reducing my own consumption.

Like almost everyone out there, I certainly could do better - and I’m trying. There are fewer plastic water bottles in my recycling bin than there have been in the past, I am making an effort to eat all of the groceries I purchase before they rot, and I’m taking steps to cut down on the number of bills that arrive in my mailbox. Changing your lifestyle to reduce what you purchase, reuse what you can, and recycle everything possible is a process that takes time and energy, and isn’t always fun. There are certainly things I might have enjoyed doing more today, but the paper behind my desk overwhelmed all else, so today became the day I had to take out the trash. It’s still just a part of life, but now I understand much more clearly how my actions (or inactions) impact the world around me.

One last note - if you’re interested in what happens to your garbage after you leave it on the curb, check out Garbage Land. It’s an interesting read and Royte does a great job picking apart the complex after life of our garbage.

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The Discovery Networks company premiers a new cable television channel this week: Planet Green.

We all live on one planet. It is rather odd that so little of our daily dose of media addresses our larger home. The environment, when featured in the nightly news, usual shows up as a special feature, a news piece that is pre-recorded and slipped in as filler at the end of a show. Even a major scientific report will slide off of Tom Brokaw’s plate if there is a celebrity disaster that takes higher billing. “Hold the mother-earth issues for a slow news day,” our media seems to say.

Humans made a game show channel, a cartoon network, and an “All Puppies, All the Time” channel before they launched a channel fully devoted to environmental issues.

I listened today to Brian Seltzer, of the New York Times, talk about the Planet Green channel on Marketplace. He called it, “The highest profile cable launch of the year,” and “a big bet that environmentally-themed programming can be entertaining [and profitable].” In other words: no matter how good the message, the programming has to attract viewers. It has to attract sponsors. It has to make money.

Who is Planet Green’s first premiere sponsor? General Motors: the makers of “The Hummer,” the king surfers of the SUV wave (which thankfully now seems to have crested.) Perhaps every major company or organization needs to have a green platform now.

Discovery’s method for attracting viewers, according to Seltzer, will be to focus on “making everything a little bit better,” and to be “optimistic, not preachy.” For the first half of this blog entry, I have definitely been preachy. For the second half, I promise to be optimistic.

I applaud vigorously. The Planet Green channel will replace the Discovery Home channel, which means it will be in 80 million American homes as of Wednesday, June 4th. 80 million American TV sets will have a constant source of awareness-raising, pro-earth information. That’s awesome. What’s more, the network is making a gamble, and to ensure that the gamble pays off they are going to have to create invogorating content. Al Gore giving (excellent) PowerPoint presentations is not going to be enough. I look forward to seeing the result.

A reading of Planet Green’s weekly schedule reveals their strategy: take show concepts that have worked before and paint them green. The schedule includes home improvement, fashion, and travel shows all with a dash of eco-verve. There’s a “Hollywood Green” show which features, “eco-conscious celebrity lifestyle segments in a sophisticated-yet-fun-to-watch style.” And then there’s “Mean Green Machines,” an enviro-friendly attempt at a greaser’s “Trucks + Bikes”-style show.

The big bang, however? Reality TV shows. Seriously. Check out the descriptions of Wasted or Greensburg. It may seem a bit forced, but if they can take reality TV, a style of television that is frequently reviled (although also frequently watched), and give it a purpose beyond ego-stroking, I may have to tune in.

The real gain here is to the American consciousness. Knowledge is power. Plenty of people have a luke-warm interest in helping the environment, and Planet Green may help them learn simple ways to really help. If arm-chair environmentalists learn lifestyle tips that help them save money while they save the earth, the show might build an unexpected middle-American fan base.

Depressing environmental news can lead to learned helplessness. Barring miraculous shifts in governmental policy, optimism and knowledge that empowers are our only roads out of the environmental decline. Knowing that you can make a difference, even in small ways, is vitally important. Despite my usual skepticism about such efforts, I’m going to tune in, visit the excellent Web site, and give big corporate America another chance to step up to the plate.